Cherokee Morning Song

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Teen dies by suicide in Edmonton group home

No break-away closet bar despite judicial recommendations in similar death

Hearts On The Ground: Bring Lakota Children Home Video. Please watch.






Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Earth Day Meditaion

The Earth Day meditations are already beginning! Here's a wonderful picture we were sent from New Zealand. Join the event here: http://on.fb.me/1t6bpbj


 Earth day....Our home meditation ritual...creating a sacred field of intention for the protection and celebration of life, humanity and Mother Earth...Namaste...sending our love & harmony from New Zealand 

We Were Children Documentary

Photo: Manitoba wins!

A huge congratulations to Eagle Vision, APTN and the whole team behind We Were Children.

They took home awards last night for Best Sound in an Info/Doc or Lifestyle Program/Series and Best Photography in a Doc Program/Series at the Canadian Screen Awards first gala.

A list of winners can be found here:

http://www.academy.ca//getmedia/aa14badb-1091-4c4e-b85f-94b0046bbaea/ACADEMY_NEWS-Academy_Announces_CSA_WINNERS_Gala_1-Mar_2014.aspx


Please copy & paste this link to view the full documentary.

http://aptn.ca/wewerechildren/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=we+were+children

Reliving the horrors of experiences in a residential school.
These institutions were set up by the Canadian and American governments to eradicate the Indian in the child.

They were run by Christian churches and funded by these governments.

The abuse against children was unbelievable with beatings,  rapes by Catholic priests, abuse by the nuns in the name of God, secret burials of children who had died and their deaths hidden by the church from families and the public.

Native children tortured even unto death in  the name of medical science similar to Adolf Hitlers death camps in this respect.

This documentary is a must see for anyone interested in what really happened to innocent children in these schools.



Monday, April 21, 2014

Sayings & Pictures Of Wisdom





















CGI - Nature Wallpaper

















Dream catcher weaved in Halifax to honour souls of missing, murdered aboriginal women

By Christine BennettFor Metro

Denise John, left and Geri Musqua-LeBlanc work on the frame of a 10 foot dreamcatcher at the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre.Jeff Harper/Metro


Halifax community members gathered on Wednesday to weave a 10-foot dream catcher to honour missing and murdered aboriginal women.

The Mi’kmaq Native Friendship Centre on Gottingen Street hosted the event with support from the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

They’re making 824 small dream catchers to hang off the large one, each of those representing one of the aboriginal women currently missing in Canada.


“A dream catcher is to help you have good dreams and take the bad dreams away, but in this case, those women who are missing, their dreams are gone,” said Debbie Eisan, who works at the centre. 

“We want to make sure that their dreams are not going to be forgotten and their lives won’t be forgotten.”

The purple ribbon on these dream catchers represents the missing woman, and the black bead represents the mourning of that woman.

The bead usually goes in the middle, but this time it’s at the bottom because there’s nothing to celebrate, Eisan said.

This idea came after the death of Loretta Saunders, an Inuit woman who was murdered in February while she was studying at Saint Mary’s University and writing her thesis on missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Eisan is calling on the government to provide equal and fair treatment to aboriginal cases.

“I just want these cases to be treated with the same respect, importance, and dignity as they would any other missing and murdered woman,” she said.





Elder's Meditation of the Day

Elder's Meditation of the Day - April 21

"Conciliation is the key to survival. Peace is the goal." -- Haida Gwaii, Traditional Circle of Elders

When we make decisions or experience conflict we need to look at the greater whole. The end result we want to accomplish is peace of mind. If we keep this goal in mind, we will, overall, live a happy and fulfilling life. Everything in the world is constantly changing so we should not resist this change. A good question to ask ourselves is, "would I rather be right or happy?". If we would rather be happy, then it is easier to let the little things go. If we would rather be right, we tend to look for the WIN/LOSE. 

Great Spirit, today, give me the tools to seek peace of mind.

By: Don Coyhis


"Conciliation is the key to survival. Peace is the goal." -- Haida Gwaii, Traditional Circle of Elders

When we make decisions or experience conflict we need to look at the greater whole. The end result we want to accomplish is peace of mind. 

If we keep this goal in mind, we will, overall, live a happy and fulfilling life. Everything in the world is constantly changing so we should not resist this change. 

A good question to ask ourselves is, "would I rather be right or happy?". If we would rather be happy, then it is easier to let the little things go. 

If we would rather be right, we tend to look for the WIN/LOSE.


Great Spirit, today, give me the tools to seek peace of mind.
By: Don Coyhis


Sunday, April 20, 2014

Meditation



"We all come from the same root, but the leaves are all different."
--John Fire Lame Deer, LAKOTA



We all come from one Great Spirit but we are all different and unique.
Nothing in the Great Creation has a twin that is identical. 
Even children that are twins are different. 
Every single person is extremely special and unique. 
Each person has a purpose and reason why they are on the Earth. 
Just like every leaf on a tree is different, each one is needed to make the tree look like it does. 
No leaf is better or worse than the other, all leaves are of equal worth and belong on the tree. 
It is the same with human beings. We each belong here and do things that will affect the great whole.
Great Spirit, today, let me see myself as a valuable contributor to the whole.

Easter



In England today there are chocolate eggs and rabbits. In France the church bells are silent as the bells of St Peter’s fly to the children, tied with ribbons and flowers. 

Across the world images that combine the Christian and the older pagan festivals of spring and rebirth abound, hijacked by a consumerism that somehow forgets the sacredness of both. Yet today, for once, the shops are closed.

For those who follow a pagan path this season is one of the renewal of life after the darkness of winter, a time for the rebirth of the sun, the exuberance of spring. 


In the fields young lambs gambol and play; birds are busy with nest building... even the kites are flying over with their beaks full… A grey and cloudy day cannot dull the blaze of green and gold that is an English spring. 

For those who follow the path of Nature, confirmation of their belief is all around. You can feel it in the woods and on the hills, in field and valley… everything is bursting into life.

For those who follow the Christ, this is the holiest season, the time when Jesus, crucified and entombed, rose again. 

It is on this event that the Christian faith is based. 

That in purely literal and physical terms this is not possible makes it a miracle, something beyond the understanding of logic and science, and it is this that forms the foundation of faith; that knowing of the soul that goes beyond reason. 

There is no confirmation in the world around us, there is no objective proof… no comfortable reassurance. 

You simply accept the teachings of the Church or you do not… or you feel Truth in your heart and that is enough, regardless of logic, teaching or dogma.


Faith... not religion… is a very personal thing, an intimate thing, and none among us has the right to judge the faith of another, to discount or degrade it, to ridicule or dismiss. 

It sings to heart and soul. It is the personal relationship between the innermost being and the Highest, however we choose or need to perceive It. 

There is a purity in true faith that shines and radiates, no matter what religion, path or denomination shapes the outer form. Faith is always a thing of the Inner world, regardless of the way it manifests in the outer realm in which we live. 

There are many who were raised within a nominally Christian society who accept without question in childhood when the impossible is perfectly feasible and it is no more challenging to believe in Resurrection than it is to believe in fairies or dragons. 


There is comfort in a faith that shows a way to live that is based on love and which has love at its ultimate blessing. 

There is comfort too in the knowledge that there is no loss of self after death… only believe and follow the tenets of that faith and you will be with the Father in Heaven. 

There are those too who come to their faith through life, growing into it gently or with the lightning flash of personal revelation, finding within it the answers to the questions of the soul.

Yet there are many who do not find faith in that way, who look at the anomalies of the biblical stories and find them impossible to reconcile. 


They question and find no answers within the Church and yet feel that within the heart of the story there is something. 

Perhaps they begin to read the stories with a detached discernment that allows them to question the disparity between the political ramifications of a powerful Church that has constructed a body of teaching to suit its needs over the past two thousand years. 

Perhaps they see the stories as a symbolic journey of the soul… an initiatory experience echoing even older tales. Perhaps they look beyond the letter of the words to the spirit of them.

A blind acceptance seldom addresses the questions of the heart. Many are raised within a religion and yet pay only lip service to its outer form, feeling a gnawing void where the kernel of faith should reside. 


There are many too who, having questioned and found the literal tales wanting, have searched behind them and come by unorthodox routes to a deep faith. 

The exoteric Church may not suffice, but there is a Light behind it, behind all religions, that draws the seeker, often by strange pathways towards a single centre of 

Truth that is greater than the sum of the pathways we walk. 

In the Christian story of Easter it is the Son of Man who is crucified, sacrificing himself for our redemption. 


Yet it is the Christ who rises, different, unknown to those closest to Him, a Mystery. For those who find faith that Mystery may take many forms and names, or none, remaining Nameless and formless as the One. 

I wonder if anyone can redeem another, or simply show the way for the sacrifice of Self to something greater and deeper than we now know. 

Perhaps in walking that path we can come to understanding, to a knowing of the heart that surpasses knowledge and transcends doubt; to a place that knows neither fact nor fiction… to the awakening touch of the inner Christ that is the Light within.

Living Elements





"My grandfather is the fire
My grandmother is the wind
The Earth is my mother
The Great Spirit is my father
The World stopped at my birth
and laid itself at my feet
And I shall swallow the Earth whole
when I die and the Earth and I will be one

Hail The Great Spirit, my father without him no one 
could exist because there would be no will to live

Hail The Earth, my mother without which no food could be grown
and so cause the will to live to starve.

Hail the wind, my grandmother for she brings loving, life 
giving rain nourishing us as she nourishes our crops.

Hail the fire, my grandfather for the light, the warmth, 
the comfort he brings without which we be animals, not men.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Governement Abuse Of Native Rights And Ceremonies



On This Day (4/19/1884): In 1884 an amendment to the Indian Act in Canada was passed making the potlatch illegal. Largely passed at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive, and contrary to "civilized" values. 
Section 3 of the Act read, "Every Indian or other person who engages in or assists in celebrating the Indian festival known as the "Potlatch" or the Indian dance known as the "Tamanawas" is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not more than six nor less than two months in any goal or other place of confinement; and, any Indian or other person who encourages, either directly or indirectly, an Indian or Indians to get up such a festival or dance, or to celebrate the same, or who shall assist in the celebration of same is guilty of a like offence, and shall be liable to the same punishment." 
The ban was only repealed in 1951.